Employers Are Offering a New Worker Benefit: Wellness Chatbots
Jan 11, 2024
The apps use artificial intelligence to
hold therapist-like conversations or make diagnoses
More workers
feeling anxious, stressed or blue have a new place to go for mental-health
help: a digital app.
Chatbots that hold therapist-like
conversations and wellness apps that deliver depression and other diagnoses or
identify people at risk of self-harm are snowballing across employers’
healthcare benefits.
“The demand for counselors is huge, but the supply of
mental-health providers is shrinking,” said J. Marshall Dye, chief executive
officer of PayrollPlans, a Dallas-based provider of benefits software used by
small and medium-size businesses, which began providing access to a chatbot
called Woebot in November. PayrollPlans expects about 9,400 employers will use
Woebot in 2024.
Amazon about a year ago
gave employees free access to Twill, an app that uses artificial intelligence
to track the moods of users and create a personalized mental-health plan. The
app offers games and other activities that the workers can play, as well as
live chats with a human “coach.”
The app “allows you to address mental health concerns the moment
they arise and can be used as a supplement to your daily well-being routine,”
the company said in a blog
post. Amazon declined to comment.
About a third of U.S. employers offer a “digital therapeutic” for
mental-health support, according to a survey of 457 companies this past summer
by professional services company WTW. An additional 15% of the companies were
considering adding such an offering in 2024 or 2025.
Supporters
say the mental-health apps alleviate symptoms such as anxiety, loneliness and
depression. Because they are available at any time, the apps can also reach
people who might not be able to fit traditional therapy into their schedules or can’t
find a therapist who has an opening.
Yet
some researchers say there isn’t sufficient evidence the programs work, and the
varied security and safety practices create a risk that private information
could be leaked or sold.
“The
companies are well known to be overextending claims about what they can do,”
said Dr. John Torous, director of the digital-psychiatry division at Beth
Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston. “Employers offering it, in some
ways it is tokenism, saying we’re offering something for mental-health
support.”
In March, the Federal Trade Commission alleged BetterHelp, an
online counseling service that uses a digital app, shared
users’ personal information with Facebook, Pinterest and others for
advertising purposes. BetterHelp, a subsidiary of Teladoc Health, settled
the case this year for $8 million without admitting wrongdoing. The company has
said its “technology, policies, and procedures are designed to protect and
secure our members’ information so it is not used or shared without their
approval and consent.”
The AI has gone rogue: Earlier this year, the National Eating
Disorders Association disabled an AI chatbot that gave dieting
tips to users with eating disorders. The organization, which didn’t respond
to an email seeking comment, said at the time that it was “investigating this
immediately and have taken down the program until further notice for a complete
investigation.”
Replika,
which offers consumers companion apps aimed at easing loneliness, updated
its app earlier this year after some users complained that the AI bot engaged
in overly sexual discussions and harassed them.
Source: Wall Street Journal